Play dead!

A couple days back, Marc Grapey offered this sage advice on the Steppenwolf blog:

1) Acting is re-acting. It’s true. Don’t react to anything on stage. You are dead.

2) All great actors listen to their scene partners. You can listen, but you can’t hear. Once again, you are dead.

3) Pee before you take the stage.

4) Use the 3 seconds of blackout left after you get on stage to find the most comfortable position possible.

5) If you have an itch, tough. See rule number one.

Sounds like he's out there for a looooong time. Man. I thought five minutes or so in Horror Academy was tough. Of course, that also involved the whole "stuff struggling chick in barrel, freak out about chick with gun, get shot in head and then try to be very abruptly dead with blood running down my face" thing. Possibly it would have been a bit easier under other circumstances. ;->

Still, that show -- with two characters who died very different deaths -- was the only time I've ever been pleased with how I pulled off a skill that every actor has to use sooner or later. I do not think of myself as someone who, as the phrase goes, "gives good dead." I'm curious how things will be the next time I'm called upon for it.

Whoops.

In which it's possible our Diva has a few things going on

I managed to completely forget the Tonys were last night. *headdesk*

The surprise of Rize

In which our Diva sits still for a couple hours, watching people who never seem to

Having worked my way through the "costume dramas I missed" portion of my Netflix queue, I've hit the "dance movies I missed" portion, which means that this morning I watched Rize. By which I mean that I -- contrary to my intent of watching the dance and paying half-attention to the interview segments while doing some work on my laptop -- couldn't take my eyes off it.

I expected that of the dance, of course. I know krumping is old news, and I'm sure there's some current street dance movement I know nothing about, but it's not going to get less impressive any time soon. I was aware of the basics: the dancers' conscious use of it as catharsis, channeling the frustrations of inner-city life into creation; the jaw-dropping isolations of popping that have been with us since the 80s, but now performed at anatomically improbable velocity (there's a disclaimer at the beginning of the film that none of the footage has been sped up, and it's a good thing to make clear, because holy CRAP); the confrontational style of two or more dancers interacting that looks eerily like rioters' violence. But I knew nothing at all about the hip-hop "clowning" movement that grew out of one man's grass-roots youth program, or its relationship to the krumping phenomenon.

I don't know if the former students of Tommy the Clown who implied krumping was their creation, evolved out of the clowning style, were stretching a point, but it's at least a primary ingredient. It's hard to tell how much of the trash-talking between the "clowns" and the "krumpers" is competitive ritual and how much is genuine antagonism, but the angry words about cheating (from both dancers and family members) after the BattleZone competition make it clear that there's at least some element of the latter. It's definitely not all warm fuzzies. But there's nothing but positive in the kids' passion for what they're doing -- one young man asserts that "this is like our ballet," and I came away with the impression that they may very well spend more time honing their skills than a pro-track ballet student -- and awareness of and gratitude for it as a shield against the destructive lifestyles around them.

Things that really struck me: the intercutting of dance sequences with footage of the Watts and Rodney King riots, and later with archival footage of traditional African dancers. The latter was particularly riveting for a couple reasons. One, because it so brilliantly matched shots of both preparation (application of face paint, warmups and camaraderie) and movement vocabulary. And two, because it came just a few minutes after some of the dancers had been explaining the evolution of one of the key movement elements of both clowning and krumping from what they called "the stripper dance." They couldn't say where the move had originated, only that it had suddenly been "the dance everybody was doing" at parties and such.

My jaw was on the floor that they were calling it that, but not because of any kind of general shock that a dance trend would be borrowed from strippers or anything like that. On the contrary, it was because I recognized it as anything but. They're talking about what's now a staple of hip-hop dance: wide stance, knees bent, balance back of center, rapid pelvic contract-and-release from lower abdominals. Which, until this morning, I had assumed to have been borrowed by hip-hop dancers from West African traditional dance, via the same heritage codified by Katherine Dunham. Because that was where I've known it from for years. And I know only the broadest strokes of Afro-Caribbean. But a move that, to my eye, says power and pride and warrior's prowess? These kids are calling "the stripper dance"! And yet, in the way they're performing it -- boys and girls alike -- it speaks exactly the same way I expect it to, and has nothing of the stripper in it at all. It just seems to me there's something very wrong when the middle-class white chick recognizes a piece of African heritage that the African-American kids apparently don't.

Other threads in the interviews include family relationships (conventional and otherwise), church ties (several of the kids are also involved in liturgical dance, and one boy's mother has some eloquent commentary linking the way her son's dancing "comes out of the spirit" to her own connection with her church, and asserts that she "gets krump for Jesus," and if you know anything at all about my opinions about art and spirituality, you can guess how happy that made me!), and the kids' very matter-of-fact knowledge and firm rejection of the violence in their lives. There's not a boring second.

Definitely worth the watching, especially if you have any interest in dance, physical prowess in general (my knees and hips were aching just watching these kids!), and/or people living real day-to-day lives in neighborhoods usually presented to us only as places to escape from.

I've moved! Except I haven't really.

Yesterday I got around to taking advantage of GoogleApps, and switched my wiliqueen.com webmail over to the Gmail system. I've been using the wiliqueen@ Gmail account for everything for nearly four years now, with the valerie@wiliqueen addy forwarding to it. Now I've just reversed that, so nobody should notice any difference unless you're particularly observant and see that everything will be coming now with the reply-to as the latter. But I'm posting this just in case anyone encounters any hiccups.

Importing all my archived mail via POP was easy as pie, but four years' worth? Took all day and well into the night. %-} Man, do I send and receive a lot of email.

I know I've been a bit scarce lately; June is bustin' out all over. I got slots for about half the general season auditions I put in for, which isn't too bad. One down (Marriott), two to go (New World Rep and Adventure Stage Chicago), plus New Leaf sent out an email saying they're booked up but will try to squeeze in walk-ins if you want to give it a shot.

I will NOT send a resume to Bailiwick and try to convince them I can squeeze understudying Tell Me On A Sunday in around my other projects. Not.

Today I have the terrible burden of hitting thrift and fabric stores for Shrew, World of Faeries, and Polaris purposes. Woe, woe is me! *dramatic hand-to-forehead* (If I'm not back by midnight, send in the rescue dogs...)

And if you call me 'Emma baby' one more time, I will scream

So. Bailiwick is looking for an understudy for Tell Me On A Sunday. Which I adore and which nobody ever does.

"Must be able to rehearse the last two weeks of July and participate in tech the first week of August."

Y'know, exactly when I'm in the final blitz to have everyone dressed when Shrew opens July 26. And of course the show runs through the weekend I'm covering the Widow/Servant.

I hate linear time.

No rest for the wicked

In which our Diva has a few irons in the fire

Three-day weekend FTW! Will no doubt want another when it's finished, as I will be using it to Get Stuff Done, but at least I have it do that in.

Stuff to Get Done includes as many costume renderings for Shrew as possible. I was hoping to have them all done by now, but the real drop-dead date is the first rehearsal in mid-June. Will probably be sketching madly away while socializing with company today.

Tomorrow will be all about studying new scene for acting class, brushing up on audition monologues and songs (everyone and their dog has general season auditions in the next couple weeks -- also need to put in for slots for those!), and getting mailings together for agent queries and a couple auditions that require snail mail instead of electronic submissions. Also need to order prints of new headshots.

Search for better-fitting day job continues apace, with sod all to show for it. Suspect at least some of them are getting filed in the "overqualified" (i.e. "she's going to want too much money, isn't she?") category, while others are looking at my rather eclectic work experience and going "Bzuh?" Sent a snail mail resume for one last week that I would really love to get; not saying any more 'cause I don't want to jinx it.

Dear AEA: Your Contract Associate job sounds faboo. Whywhywhy do you have to say "Employees of Actors' Equity Association are not permitted to perform in or stage manage any Equity or non-Equity production"??? [emphasis mine] I do not love you. (Not that this is particularly news.)

Monday is for housecleaning and car shopping. Car shopping is a necessity because (a) the one-car household thing is getting OLD; (b) the one functioning car does not have functioning air conditioning, and I'm so not doing that another summer; (c) better mileage plz!!; and (d) need new car before driving to Toronto in July for reasons (a) through (c). Have been looking very seriously at the smart car now that they're finally available in the U.S. If you've ever parked in the North Side neighborhoods where most of Chicago's storefront theatres are, you will immediately understand the appeal.

Evenings are for writing. Was writing an action scene yesterday (um, yeah, for the Lizzie project. Sure. *sheepish g*), and getting up to walk through the moves (to make sure they made sense in real space as well as in my head) made me realize how much I miss fight work. Good thing there's a Babes workshop coming up in a couple weeks. (For which registration is another thing on my to-do list this lovely holiday weekend.)

So, still lots going on, but all of it worth the doing.

For one brief shining moment

TiVo is a marvelous contraption, for it caught Sunday's Live From Lincoln Center broadcast of the NY Phil's semi-staged Camelot, which I had no idea was happening on account of life-on-spin-cycle. Last night I decided to take an evening to sit down and watch it and decompress rather than try to Get Stuff Done, with the result that I think more Stuff might well Get Done tonight than might otherwise have last night and tonight together. (That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. *nodnodnodnodnod*)

While it was far from an ideal Camelot, it had its moments. Most of them provided by Nathan Gunn, who is, if not the BEST LANCELOT EVER, a ludicriously close second to Richard White. Yes, the opera star with (I'm given to understand) no musical theatre credits? Put everyone but maybe Marin Mazzie to shame. Serious whoa.

Christopher Lloyd as Pellinore = well, of course. Also, I'm reasonably certain there was some ad-libbed color in the description of the Questing Beast, among other things. Stacy Keach was a perfectly serviceable Merlin.

The book was shuffled oddly in a few places ("Before I Gaze" in Act II? Srsly?), and I remain convinced that if you're cutting anything, the entire Morgan LeFay scene should be the first to go (thus rendering the casting of Fran Drescher a moot point). It just doesn't fit. Hateithateithateit. (Probably doesn't help that I imprinted hard on the 1982 revival. But they were right to cut it! And wrong to cut "Fie on Goodness," which this one did too. I don't know if people don't want it to look like Mordred corrupts the knights too easily or what, but dude, that's the point: the Table was ALWAYS fragile. It represents change that's incredibly hard to implement, and incredibly easy to backslide from.) Haven't decided yet what I think of Goth!Mordred -- the whole production is an odd mix of contemporary and pseudo-period design, and there's a way in which it makes sense, but he's perhaps a bit too jarring.

Gabriel Byrne seems like a no-brainer for Arthur in theory (even if he hadn't started his movie career as Uther!), but in practice, errrrmm. Speak-singing still needs to have a bit more relationship to what the orchestra is doing. He plugged along pretty gamely, but he was the one you could really tell was underrehearsed and out of his element.

Which was a pity, because for the bits where the singing was taken out of the equation, there were some solid "oh, yeah, that" moments. Not that my heart doesn't break for any Arthur during Guenevere's aborted execution -- the scene is constructed to be pretty well cast-proof -- but you could see Mordred's lines ("Let her die, your life is over; let her live, your life's a fraud!") hitting him and cutting deep.

And of course I will never not get chills during the "Resolution" speech that closes Act I, and never not cry at the knighting of Tom of Warwick. Do justice to those, and you're allowed to be Arthur. (Even if Byrne did drop "not a man" after "I am a king," which gives me a cramp in my sense of rhetoric.)

I love that speech so very, very much...

Proposition: If I could choose from every woman who breathes on this earth, the face I would most love -- the smile, the touch, the heart, the voice, the laugh, the very soul itself, every detail and feature to the last strand of the hair -- it would all be Jenny.

Proposition: If I could choose from every man who breathes on this earth -- a man for my brother, a man for my son, and a man for my friend, it would all be Lance.

I love them. I love them and they answer me with pain. And torment. Be it sin, or not sin, they have betrayed me in their hearts, and that's far sin enough! I can see it in their eyes. I can feel it when they speak. And they must pay for it and be punished. I shall not be wounded and not return it in kind. I demand a man's vengeance!

Proposition: I am a king, not a man. And a very civilized king. Could it possibly be civilized to destroy the thing I love? Could it possibly be civilized to love myself above all? What about their pain? And their torment? Did they ask for this calamity? Can passion be selected? Is there any doubt of their devotion to me, and to our Table?

By God, I shall be a king! This is the time of King Arthur, when we shall reach for the stars. This is the time of King Arthur, when violence is not strength, and compassion is not weakness. We are civilized!

Resolved: We shall live through this together, Excalibur, they, you, and I. And may God have mercy on us all.

Chills, man. I know a lot of people who really hate the show, and I will never ever understand.

Still alive (despite the weather)

Okay, who stole spring? I object. Strenuously.

Acting class continues to be Of The Awesome. Pre-class chitchat revealed an unusually high geek quotient in the room, which I always appreciate. There are never as many fannish types in theatre as you (or at least I) think there should be. Also, I appear to have been permanently dubbed "Red" by our coach, which is fine but amusing. Last week I was Red for the first hour and Victoria a couple of times, then he settled into Valerie for the rest of the evening, so I know he does in fact know my name.

Scenework is proving to be a great push for figurative muscles I haven't been working nearly enough lately. Once my scene partner got hold of the out-of-print play we were assigned a scene from, that is. Some things really aren't just getting in your own way! %-} It's A Cry of Players, which, now that I've read it, I'm kind of amazed I'd never heard of. There are thoughts formulating in my head that I want to blog about in addition to the stuff going directly into the scenework itself, but I'm not sure yet what form that'll take. Except a glancing amusement that I would be given Anne Hathaway Shakespeare as my first assignment, after my recent babble touching on the playing-a-historical-person thing. Scene partner is awesome and open to pushing himself and risking. Not to mention willing to alternate coming out to the burbs on Metra with me going into the city to get together and work.

In the area where Actor Val intersects with Fannish Val, beginnings of an interesting discussion this morning on the LiveJournal Slings and Arrows discussion comm. (Spoilers galore for all three seasons.) I really need to rewatch that whole series. Y'know, in my copious free time...

I am actress, hear me snore

First class at Chicago Actors Studio last night. Like the coach, like the atmosphere, like the other members, and think it will be just the right kick in my slightly stagnant pants for this moment in time.

It's a good sign that I didn't realize until I was in my car that the ostensibly 7:00 - 10:30 class had run past midnight. Really it is. Getting up this morning, however... *YAAAAAAAWN*

If they continue to have 17 people attending the Monday night class, it's going to be an interesting 10 weeks.

No, you cannot has Puccini. (Not yours)

In which our Diva is abruptly operaless

No Suor Angelica. :-/ For a variety of reasons beyond anyone's control, not least of which is the necessity of Artistic-Director-of-Many-Hats going to Montreal to be with her dying dad.

At least I have my Thursday nights and my first couple weeks of June back. *sigh*

Chemistry, baby!

And I don't just mean the kind that happens onstage. Met with potential costuming assistant for Shrew, who is no longer potential. Got along like a house on fire, and she lives about five minutes away, thus relieving most of the usual logistical headaches of delegating. The fact that she doesn't just have sewing skills, but serious theatre costuming skills, pretty much relieves the rest. \o/

Now I really gotta get some sketches done before next meeting with director next week, as I would like to continue getting along with her like a house on fire...

Chipmunk Girl has left the building!

Or mostly, anyway. There's still a little puffiness around my jaw, but I only notice it because I know my face. Also, hooray for being able to open my mouth all the way! Should make it a heckuva lot easier to have a voice lesson tomorrow. Also means I can see where the wisdom teeth came out from, and man was I right about there not being enough room in my jaw! I don't know where the heck four more teeth were anchored! Am both apprehensive and excited about seeing an orthodontist once it's all healed. I've had this traffic jam in my mouth for so long, it's going to be strange not to have them so crowded that I slice through dental floss at least three times before I get them all.

Meanwhile, I have a completely irrational craving for a chili cheese dog. *facepalm*

Curiously, hurting more today than it has the last couple. Mostly stitches pulling, I think. Which makes me very glad the Vicodin doesn't loop me out to speak of, because I have stuff to get done, darnit. Have been itching to sing, and planning to give it a shot for a while tonight. The poor voice is like "Okay, cold and then sinus infection and then wisdom teeth... Are we DONE with all this stuff now? Can we get on with business plzkthx?" I really wanted to be in solid vocal shape before we started Suor Angelica, darnit, but that just wasn't in the cards. Ah, well.

Also need to start sketching for Shrew. And must go over to Chicago Actors Studio and get registered early next week. But those are for after BigBabyBrother's wedding this weekend, which, yay!

Next week. *deep breath * Next week will be NORMAL craziness. ;-D

Um... No, thanks.

Dude. I dunno if it's just a seasonal cycle thing or what, but the preponderance of reality shows on the casting breakdowns the last couple weeks is downright creepy.

Rainy days and Mondays

...are at least not snowy days. But still Mondays.

I've been meaning to hit the Midwest Independent Film Festival some first Tuesday or other. Networking yay! Was too sick last month, but am totally going to haul my finally-getting-better butt into the city tomorrow night. (Yay, Zithromax! Yay, sinuses no longer attempting to secede through the front of my skull!) The offering scheduled happens to be one that others might also be interested in, a docu about women's body image called America the Beautiful. Tickets are $10. Chicago peeps, if you end up planning to go, let me know!

In opera news, apparently we're doing Tosca next year. Went to Solange's bel canto recital yesterday afternoon, and she did "Vissi d'arte" (of all things...fach shift much?) as her encore and mentioned that. First I've heard. And actually, this time last year she was talking about The Merry Widow, which ended up morphing into Elisir, so we'll see. I did a bit of a doubletake at the public mention, tho.

Also, now that the former Café Magdalena is officially launched as the newest location of Villa Verone, our cabaret nights there are coming back! Looks like they will now be Sunday nights, and early word is that they'll be Sundays in May and July. I'll keep you posted as details become available.

Moral of the story: Take the bloody stairs!

My dreams tend toward the seriously batshit bizarre, especially when I'm doing a show. Atypically, I've remembered very few dreams of any kind in recent months. However, there was one I woke up from about 1:30 this morning with quite clear recall, and no small amusement.

I'm traveling to some sort of meeting -- the impression I retain is that it was in downtown Chicago, and theatre-related -- using an extended arrangement of escalators heading up and down and all around, either inside one large building or connecting several, I'm not sure which. But it goes a long way. I do have a crystalline-vivid image of an almost Escher-like descent through a red brick archway up ahead, when the whole shebang becomes a traffic jam with people jammed solidly the width of the escalator, as far as the eye can see. The crowd pattern behaves exactly like creeeeeeeping gridlocked traffic, although the locomotion is still coming from the escalator.

Eventually, just as I throw my hands up and climb over the wide-but-far-from-impassable half-wall separating the escalator from the stairs that have been next to it the entire time, word makes it back that the backup is because some guy set his boss on fire way up ahead. I continue into the building on the stairs, my path unobstructed, only slightly annoyed with myself for waiting so long.

I can't imagine where anything like that might have come from. :-)

:: vibrates in place ::

I'm having one of those GET ME OUTTA HERE kinda days. The demands of Office of Doom are actually more manageable right this moment than they have been for most of the past three or four months, but that doesn't help.

I want to be somewhere that is NOT HERE, doing work I actually CARE about. I don't want to not work, I don't want to play all the time. I want to WORK. Work that is not this work, because I Do Not Care about this work, no matter how hard I try.

Knowing that I'm pursuing all available avenues to do something about that helps only slightly when I'm in this mood. Probably makes me even more restless, in fact. In the starting blocks, waiting for the damn pistol to fire already.

*deep breath* End of lunch hour. Focus. Other people do care about this stuff, and deserve to have it done promptly and well.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have no ambition. I know enough to know I wouldn't want it, but I'm still curious what it's actually like.

The Belle of New Hampshire

Last night we attended Sarah Vowell's reading/talk, which was all kinds of cool. Really must read her books. Though I don't think it will be quite as fun as her reading them aloud. :-)

She chose a Lincoln-assassination-related passage for the first reading, prefaced by an entertaining tangent about how dumb it was from a PR standpoint for Booth to pull the trigger on Good Friday. Something to the effect of "thus ensuring that a President half the country hated on Friday would, by Sunday morning, be eulogized in every Easter sermon." Which is a really, really good point, and one I don't remember if I ever thought about before.

If I did, it would have been while I was devouring research getting ready for These Honorable Men, and that was 1995, so it's a little fuzzy. I read about the whole topic, of course, but mostly I was focussing on any mentions I could find of my character, Booth's "secret fiancée," Lucy Hale. (The linked article just happened to be the first Google hit I got this morning, and is really cool, but has the same oddity from my perspective as the one I'm about to explain...)

Those aspects of my research are less fuzzy, despite it being thirteen years later. So the passage Vowell read last night got to the part about how Lucy's father was keen on taking her with him to his new assignment as Ambassador to Spain, thus putting as much distance between "his pretty daughter" and Booth as possible... Well, that's all quite accurate, except for the part where everything I read indicated that she was quite the social belle, and regarded as having an "air" or personal charisma, specifically in spite of not being considered a beauty. Even my hubby (who, granted, had to live with me while I was living with Lucy, but still, thirteen years!) chuckled at that. And noted in the car on the way home that her long list of suitors, including Robert Todd Lincoln, could probably be at least partly ascribed to money and connections. Which, yeah, probably true. But since she's one of two historical figures I've played (and it's questionable how much one can count Catherine de Valois as written by Shakespeare in that reckoning), I choose to believe it was charisma. ;-D
IIRC, neither of the good pictures I found of Lucy online this morning is the carte de visite Booth had in his pocket at the time of his death. (The actual one is in the museum in the basement of Ford's.) It might have been the one at the top of this post, but I don't think so. But my favorite -- the one I photocopied and taped to the front of my THM script -- is this second one, mostly because it's the one that reminded me so much of my maternal grandmother (seen below modeling her brother's Army coat) as a young woman. Grandma Wieging was a lady and a tough broad, with nary a speck of cognitive dissonance between the two, and is without a doubt the root of what my mom raised me to be.
There ended up being some of Grandma in my Lucy because of that picture, which worked amazingly with the way Doug wrote her -- young and sheltered and not without vulnerability, to be sure, but no hothouse flower either. Such a gift that she was written for me! That'll always blow my mind.

We actually had some remarkable resemblances in that play, some of them not even discovered until we started doing research after it was cast! The standard comment was "Except for Val, because she's prettier." Which still amuses the heck out of me, as my one experience with the typical "more glamorous version of historical figure" thing. Since I'm not usually more glamorous in, well, general. And of course I was amused by the definitely-more-glamorous Jean Louisa Kelly in the TV-movie The Day Lincoln Was Shot a couple years later. I distinctly remember making note of that. (And also feeling particularly unglamorous myself, as I was watching it with a big knot on my forehead, having whacked myself with a dryer door in the laundry room half an hour before.)
It's a curious thing, that people seem to find it essential to characterize such a person as a beauty, even if she wasn't. Which feeds tangentially into the Lizzie project, as one of the threads I'm playing with is how she started out being perceived as quite plain and/or odd-looking, but became defined as the Pre-Raphaelite stunner. Complete with a certain amount of revisionism going into the story of her "discovery" by Walter Deverell, who was looking for red hair and a girl who could be convincing as a boy (i.e. Viola-as-Cesario). All pretty much because Rossetti said so, and saw her that way, and painted her that way.
Funny all the things popping up lately that resonate with that watershed year. Maybe just me, or maybe the Universe trying to tell me something. :-)

Two degrees of Chicago theatre

Possibly one and a half. I really don't think there are any more than that. Seriously, I'd done all of two shows here before it was impossible to go to a theatre-related function without bumping into someone I knew. Which is just a lovely, welcoming thing. Have I mentioned lately that I should have moved here five years sooner? Because it's true.

Today's edition? Promo photo call for Shrew. Our Kate's fiancé was the photographer. He arrived and we both said "You look really familiar." Someone mentioned Babes with Blades about fifteen seconds later, and determined that he had seen me in Horror Academy last fall, but were both convinced that wasn't it. We then worked our way through GenCon and Origins to arrive at Ohio Renaissance Festival.

At which we were both dance guild (and frequently partners for the Cumberland Reel) in NINETEEN NINETY-FIVE.

There followed reminiscences of the Great Flood of 1572, declaring war on the mud, and the student day when the Tudor Rose stage was set on fire.

You can't make this stuff up. Or at least I can't.

Work what you got

In which our Diva and cameras continue to have an uneasy relationship

I now have in my hot little pixel-stained hands the two headshots I picked from my shoot with Beth Cummings at the end of January. (I would have had them a lot sooner, but her original email fell into the ether and I just now got around to asking after them.) Beth is one of the kickass women of Babes With Blades, with whom I had the long-aspired-to privilege of performing in last fall's Horror Academy. She just recently launched her business, and I totally recommend her to anyone looking to update. She does some really innovative things with angles, while still fitting into the stylistic expectations of the Chicago market.

In a fairly typical scenario when I'm the subject, out of about 200 shots, I managed to find one...



...I actually like, and one...



...I picked because I'm entitled to two, and it has something that drew me, but also things that bug me.

The biggest thing that bugs me I can do something about, and need to just get around to it: I swear my teeth get crookeder by the day. I have the oral surgeon and orthodontist referrals. I will call on Monday. *determined face* (Short version: Never bothered getting wisdom teeth out. Not enough actual room in mouth. Traffic jam.)

The smaller thing is that "deer in headlights" thing that I've always had. Just ask my mother -- I don't remember when she didn't point out that the distinctive feature of even my baby pictures is that "you can see the whites all the way around your eyes!" Which is cute and funny when talking about baby pictures, but not terribly useful as a first impression for a serious adult actress, y'know? But I always have to really concentrate to keep it from happening pretty much any time I'm trying to hold still.

I'm working on tipping that love/hate relationship with photos a little more to the "love" side. It's a challenge. This is my calling card, my knock at the door, my little 8x10 package of "This is me, and you want to see more." The challenge for me in judging and picking them has always been to try to approximate a first-impression eye, instead of being drawn immediately to the familiar flaws. (Yes, flaws give you character. However, there's only so much character they want, especially from a woman who reads as under 30.) I've always considered myself reasonably attractive (barring the occasional hormone-driven bout of "OMG give me a paper sack STAT!" that everyone has), but that's in the real world. There's only so much water it holds in an undustry with truly surreal quantities of pretty wandering around.

My criteria are simple: I want it to (a) look like me, and (b) look good. That's a lot harder than people who know me in real life tend to expect. Poor Beth got me on a cranky evening after a cranky day at Office of Doom, when the luck of the draw just meant I was having a helluva time letting go of the tension of the day. So the fact that she managed to take any pictures I like is a minor miracle.

I'm not a model; I have no expectation that posing for still photos is ever going to be a large part of my work. But it is always going to be a part, and it is usually going to be what people see first. For better or for worse, things are structured such that I'm being assessed out of the gate on something that is a weak point for me. So sometime in the next year or so, however long it takes to get my teeth closer to where I want them, I need to learn how to be better at it.

Working smarter, not just harder

In my "get this damn career thing together already" mode, various thoughts that have been whirling through my little diva brain, gathered here for some semblance of order and to have them in one place as a reminder:

Yes, I'm in more or less the same place I was ten years ago. Yes, that would probably not be the case if I had made some different choices along the way. Yes, that is frustrating as all hell. Own it and let it go. It does not help my mental health. It sure as hell does not help my work.

I totally grok the "biological clock" thing in a way I never thought I would. Only mine isn't ringing "Aaaagh! Must have kids now or it's not going to happen!" (That would also be nice, but it's not what the lizard brain is screaming about.) It's "Aaaagh! Must get career momentum now or it's not going to happen!" And yeah, there's some truth to it. But I'm no less likely a leading lady at 38 than I was at 25.

Which is to say, quite frankly, not all that likely. Most of the actresses I love and follow because they've created and inhabited characters that really spoke to me aren't the huge household names, largely because I tend to develop that attachment most strongly with TV series characters. That's a mode of storytelling and way of living with a character that I would dearly, dearly love the opportunity to experience, and one I'm most likely never going to. Even if I were in the right place -- if I had been born in Canada like most of my favorites, or if I had moved to L.A. a decade ago when I was sorely tempted and could probably have taken good advantage of some tenuous connections -- I am, as the song goes, not that girl.

My friends are probably sick to death of my glib "I'm a stage actor for a reason; cameras and I don't get along," and it's really only half true. I hate most still pictures of me -- always have, probably always will -- but have surprised myself by enjoying and generally being pleased with the little bit of film work I've done. But I'm still not someone people look at and think "leading lady material" the way they do with someone like Amanda Tapping or Christina Cox or Gina Holden. There's not really a way to change that, and I'm still evolving a strategy for finding the place where I'm what they want.

One of my other glibs is that I want to be Emma Thompson or Catherine Disher when I grow up. That's maybe a little closer to the mark. But I'm still working on the growing up. And it's a weird schizo thing, because with 40 not that far off on the horizon, people still look at me and see 26 or 27. And however much we wish differently, 26 or 27 is supposed to be gorgeous first and everything else second. And someone else is always going to come in with more gorgeous.

All of which leads me to conclude that, far from time running out, I am in fact not old enough yet for hotness to become a secondary consideration, and for what I do have to get people's attention.

I do not suck. Of this I am (usually) certain. That's not always an easy thing to hold onto, when it's impossible not to gauge your worth as an actor through others' eyes. A writer or painter or sculptor or even musician can do their work on their own, any time. Sharing it with others and having it appreciated is of course important, but they can do the actual work. Acting is entirely collaborative. There's an extent to which you can make your own opportunities, but when it all boils down, it cannot be done without someone, somewhere saying "Yes, you can do this work, and we will do it with you." And then when you get to do it, it must be done on the group's terms and according to their schedule.

That? Will make a person crazy right quick if they're not careful.

I've been very restless lately because I haven't been getting to really do the work. Horror Academy was fantastic -- oh, how I cherish that people not only believed when Lula died, but cared! -- but it closed four months ago. Auditions are fine as far as they go, but that's maybe five minutes of engaging with a character I've just met, and it just doesn't cut it. The roles I get in opera are necessarily limited by my vocal development -- cardinal irony of remaining an actor first and foremost!

Ergo, time to revisit the thought I had months ago about taking a proper acting class. It's been a long time, and right now it's my best option for really engaging with character work. Plus I think I've been stagnating a bit. I may even take a break from voice lessons for a while. I know it will slow down my development there, and my teacher will be frustrated, but she also knows singing is always going to be secondary for me. Training the last several years has been about all sorts of wonderful side areas -- singing, stage combat, and yeah, after Barnum I was giving serious thought to going back to the Actor's Gymnasium to do the regular aerial course -- but I haven't gotten back to basics in a long while. And with what I've been up to lately, back to basics with an on-camera emphasis is what I need.

It's also been waaay too long since I set foot in a dance class, and I want to get back into that habit. But that's a second priority. And since the Elgin Park District doesn't even have any ballet classes on the spring session schedule (WTF?), it may mean looking into private studios when the time comes. One thing at a time. Which needs to be the mantra, really -- trying to do everything at once is accomplishing nothing!

So. Plan of attack for this weekend:

1. Check out classes in Chicago (there are a couple I know a bit about), get registered, and get back in training.
2. Start getting mailings out to agents. Was going to wait until my new headshots and reel were ready, but both of those are taking longer than I'd hoped, and my current headshot and resume could be enough for now. I can get in the door now, and give them more and updated material soon.
3. Strategize the hunt for a day job that will keep me alive without eating my life.

Yay, plan!